SAN FRANCISCO — The Los Angeles Dodgers are still learning Shohei Ohtani’s other side. But they’re loving what they’ve seen. For more than a year now, they’ve witnessed the affable, history-making slugger, the one who turned Oracle Park into his launching pad and McCovey Cove into his landing zone Friday night.
Now, they see the bully, the one who stomps around the mound as if he were stalking his prey, the “edgy” pitcher persona that the game’s two-way superstar has reassumed in his return from a second major elbow surgery.
“You could see it … that different demeanor that he carries on days that he pitches,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
His latest was among his best and most assertive. Each of his first seven pitches Saturday afternoon against the San Francisco Giants was a four-seam fastball, touching 99.9 as he authored a dominant opening frame. He struck out the side in that first inning, blowing fastballs past Mike Yastrzemski and Heliot Ramos before getting Rafael Devers to wave over a slider.
Ohtani threw 36 pitches over three scoreless innings Saturday, both high-water marks for him so far as the Dodgers take things slow. He and Emmet Sheehan tag-teamed the start of a dominant pitching performance, snapping the team’s longest losing streak since 2017 at seven games with a 2-1 win against their longtime rivals.
It was Ohtani’s longest and best outing to date this season, hours after unleashing a swing that drew comparisons to the best hitter ever to call this ballpark home.
“I don’t see Barry Bonds pitching the day after he hit a ball into the ocean,” Roberts said. “Yeah, it’s crazy. Yeah, it’s not commonplace.”
3 batters, 3 strikeouts for Shohei Ohtani ⛽️ pic.twitter.com/m8CctcmuUc
— MLB (@MLB) July 12, 2025
This is the version of Ohtani the Dodgers dreamed of when they gave him $700 million to pitch and hit, just months removed from a surgery that put at least half of that persona in jeopardy. Now they’re getting it in what is the equivalent of a rehab assignment, just in major-league games.
Starting it all, as usual, is Ohtani. So much of what the Dodgers could be starts with how far he takes them. Last year, it was just his bat that helped them to a World Series. Through his first nine innings this season on the mound, he’s struck out 10 batters with a pair of walks and five hits (all singles) allowed. He hasn’t allowed a run since his season debut on the mound. It’s a sample that should make the Dodgers giddy.
“My first outing (against the San Diego Padres), I was able to throw pretty hard but without having to throw hard, per se,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “That was something that really helped me ease a little bit of the anxiety about going into pitching a real game. So I think that really helped me just stay loose and easy while being able to maintain pretty good velocity.”
There are still some things for Ohtani to work out as he gets back to pitching. When he came back out after that dominant first inning, he was searching for his release point. He got two quick outs in the second inning before issuing a four-pitch walk to Jung Hoo Lee. When Yastrzemski got a second look at Ohtani in the third inning, he bashed a cutter into the outfield for a single.
These are still dials Ohtani can tweak. So too is getting used to the abnormalities that come with what he’s doing. In games in which he’s pitched, he’s gone five for 20 at the plate with a pair of extra-base hits. That second inning on the mound was perhaps disturbed in part because he was standing in the on-deck circle when the top half of the frame came to an end. The clock counting down the two minutes and five seconds between innings sat at 1:07 when he threw his first warmup toss. Umpires have given Ohtani discretion and additional time in situations like this, similar to when a catcher records the final out of an inning (which wound up being the case for Dalton Rushing as well). But it’s still getting ready against the clock.
Those are the small kinds of hurdles Bonds has alluded to in the past when saying he thinks Ohtani should ditch pitching. But as Bonds himself saw in person Saturday — the Giants were honoring the slugger with a bobblehead — Ohtani’s dominance on the mound is difficult to ignore.
His fastball is a weapon. He’s hardly had to rely on the splitter that was his go-to putaway pitch when he first arrived in the majors in 2018. Even the sweeper he leaned on throughout his last year on the mound in 2023 has taken something of a back seat as he’s shown the ability to bully the opposition.
“Today was one of those days where my fastball felt pretty good, so I leaned on it a little bit more today,” Ohtani said.
He threw 23 of them and has leaned on the fastball a little more than the last time major-league hitters saw him. It’s a flex of how good he’s looked in his return from surgery: power at the plate and on the mound.
“It makes guys think in the box a little bit,” Rushing said. “You’re getting fed fastball after fastball after fastball, and most of these guys aren’t used to that. And obviously, it’s a good fastball. It’s one that he’s used over the course of his career and been very successful with it.”
(Photo: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)